Author: mopress

Archive Report–Day One
By Greg Moses

Thanks to an open records request and some very professional help from state staffers, I am now reviewing the original documents from the Heflin v. Vo election contest.

From the Monday afternoon review, I have confirmed the observations of Master of Inquiry Will Hartnett (R-Dallas) that at least one deposition was submitted with two different colors of ink. However, at this point I’m not sure about the further claim that two kinds of handwriting are evident.

Also, the so-called mystery of the “deported” Nigerian-American voters was not a mystery to anyone with access to the original evidence. This includes the Republican team of lawyers who gathered the evidence in the first place. Written very plainly on the envelope of one of the provisional ballots cast by one of the voters was the explanation that the changed voter registration was probably due to the work of another candidate in another district. This plain indication of the probable cause of error did not deter Republican attorneys from attempting to suppress the ballot anyway.

So far, evidence for bad faith is not in the style of handwriting on depositions, but in the explanations for discrepancies in voter registrations that were plainly written and plainly ignored by the Republican effort to criminalize Democrat voters.

I’ll spend most of the day Tuesday going through more files. Please stay tuned.

Of course, we are delighted that Vo was finally ruled the winner, but there are voters rights issues worth pursuing, so we’re not ready to celebrate unconditionally. Please see stories below.

Thanks to Charles Kuffner at OffTheKuff.Com and the other Greg at GregsOpinion.Com for blogging the post-hearing work of the Texas Civil Rights Review. And to the Houston Chronicle, hang in there, the voters of Houston need you.

Note: Originally posted as top message 8:30 am 2/15/05

Documentary Irregularities and Why they Matter

in the Houston Election Challenge

By Greg Moses

Counterpunch / ILCA Online
IndyMedia Austin , Houston
OffTheKuff / GlobalResistanceNetwork

It’s not the first time I’ve occupied a room filled with state documents in Texas, but it is the first time that I’ve been treated to full-time surveillance while I thumb through everything, and actually I’m kind of happy about this. The chaperones have been altogether polite and quiet. And the surveillance itself is the best sign the state could send me that I’m probably taking notes on the right documents Tuesday.

The most significant section of this ten-foot row of notebooks set up in front of me is a group of original depositions taken from Houston-area residents who were accused of stray voting in the November election when they cast ballots in the district that elected Vietnamese immigrant Hubert Vo to the state house.

Page after page of these depositions tell mundane stories of voters who once moved from Houston to Sugar Land but who didn’t keep up with their paperwork, went back to Houston to vote, and then two months later got their doors knocked on by people with pens, carrying threatening documents that said in dandy legal language, you better answer these questions or we’ll throw you in jail: Where do you really live and who did you vote for?

“Told us not to come back,” is the pointed note that one process server makes on threatening documents that were intended for delivery to a voter in Katy, Texas at 4:30 p.m. on New Years Day. Since she told them to get lost, and refused to incriminate herself as a voter who crossed back to her old neighborhood on election day, attorneys went to work on her file. They showed that according to the tax district she owned the home in Katy and that according to Mapquest the home was 6.58 miles away from the elementary school where she voted. And of course they had a copy of her signature at the voting place and a copy of the statement of residence that she was asked to fill out there. Two days before the hearing, they went back and got their deposition from her, too. In the end, she never gave a clear answer about who she voted for.

This is the kind of thing you see over and over again, the kind of thing that put everyone to sleep during two days of public hearings that failed to overturn the election. Time after time, dedicated voters got caught failing to keep their registrations in order, and people just dozed off. So the hearing room was pretty much cleared out by the morning of Jan. 28 when Master of Discovery Will Hartnett (R-Dallas) sat silently looking at the deposition of a citizen from Fresno, Texas.

“Um, I’m just going to point this out, I don’t know what to make of it, but this one has different ink and maybe different handwriting. I’m no handwriting expert but I think the parties should look at this. It definitely has two different pens on it, and I don’t know the handwriting is hard to tell, you all just need to look at this.”

http://www.tlc.state.tx.us/legal/elec_contests.html

At which point (1:26:31 into the Friday morning broadcast archived online) Republican attorney Andy* Taylor walks briskly to the Master, retrieves Ms. Wyatt’s deposition, and flips the pages dramatically.

“I’d just suggest contestee look at it to see if there’s any possible irregularities,” says Hartnett, index finger on chin. “The main answer appears to be in the same ink as the person’s name, so that’s my primary interest, but it’s just odd, it looks that the N/As (indicating that a question is not applicable) are in a different pen. But you all can look at that later if you want, I’m just pointing it out.”

By this time, attorney Larry Veselka (representing contestee Hubert Vo) is saying that the N/As are indeed in different ink, different handwriting, and appear to match certain other N/As found on other depositions that have been turned in only days before the hearing. Meanwhile Republican attorney Taylor is huddling with his client, the deposed incumbent, saying something very close to his ear.

My own notes from reviewing the deposition in question on Tuesday suggest that the N/As are not in the flowing cursive style that the voter uses for the rest of her answers. And her signature is written in the same ink that the server of the deposition uses to write his own name.

“We really need a brighter light to look at it,” said Hartnett on the day of the hearing.

“Yeah,” said Veselka, pointing out that the deposition had been signed Jan. 21, less than a week before the hearing, and six days after the close of the discovery period, Jan. 15.

The very next deposition taken up on Jan. 28 by Hartnett also had N/As that Hartnett and Veselka agreed fit a pattern of looking more like each other than the handwriting of the voters in question.

My notes show that there are at least two more depositions with N/A look-alikes submitted into the record on Feb. 1, the Tuesday after the hearing ended, along with another deposition that has two colors of ink.

I also found in the batch of Feb. 1, two returns of service, both dated 9:30 a.m. Jan. 26 and signed by the same voter. The most likely explanation would be that the voter was served with two subpoenas at once. But why was one service receipt printed on a fax machine while another was not? And why were two subpoenas needed?

I ponder the puzzles of these documents, their careful protection, and their lack of public attention as I walk out of the state building past television trucks that are set up for live shots on the evening news. I know what they won’t be reporting again.

For example, they won’t be reporting the deposition of one 49-year-old Houston voter who I will name with the initials MP. Somehow MP’s deposition didn’t make the final list, and my guess is that the case was dropped like a hot potato because MP testified with such clarity that the Republican attorneys did not want to discuss the deposition in public.

But in order to get in the mood for MP’s deposition you have to first read the subpoena that like all the others is signed by Republican attorney Andy Taylor and commands: “HEREIN, FAIL NOT, but have you then and there before me, at said time and place this writ, with your return thereon, showing you have executed the same.”

And next you have to read the Jan. 11 letter from Hartnett that says, “If you do not cooperate, I, working under the jurisdiction of the Select Committee on Election Contests, have the power to cause you to be taken into custody by law enforcement, and held until you answer the requested questions.”

And then you have to read how you are ordered to appear at your own home at 5:00 p.m. on Jan. 15 (the last day of discovery) to submit your answers in writing to the questions that have been handed to you. Now you are ready to read MP:

Question 12: “Has anyone ever tried to intimidate you in any way or accuse you of breaking the law when asking you about voting in the Nov. 2, 2004 general election?”

MP: “Not until I got this notice from Mr. Heflin” (the deposed Republican incumbent who demanded this election contest).

Question 13: “What did they say or do to you?”

MP: “It seems like I’m accused for cheating. I don’t think I did anything wrong on that day. I went to vote as one of my duties as an American to support the country. I feel sad to fill out this paper. Those candidates are not pur
suing their career for the cou
ntry but for their own fame and money? How sad it is!” And just to make clear how she feels about her candidate, she answers elsewhere: “I’m glad I did vote for Mr. Hubert Vo.”

Intimidation is what MP calls the election contest, and that experience of intimidation is what makes irregularities in ink color and handwriting vibrant issues for all of us. If the law is serious about calling voters to account for their irregularities, it should be just as serious about the irregularities that crop up wherever voters are pursued. If we are entitled to fair elections, we are also entitled to fair election contests. Which is why I am pleased to be watched every minute that I handle the sacred depositions of the voters from House District 149. And why I look forward to returning once again to hear the stories they tell…

Note: Frist reference to Andy Taylor corrected 2/17–gm

By Greg Moses
Editor, Texas Civil Rights Review

BurntOrangeReport / OffTheKuff

Republican attorney Andy Taylor set out to prove that illegal and fraudulent voter behaviors were the main reasons behind the November election defeat of long-time incumbent Talmadge Heflin in the race for Texas House District 149. But according to archives of original documents that he submitted in support of his case, Taylor willfully ignored exculpatory evidence that showed a number of voters were more likely victims, not perpetrators of wrongdoing.

Several voters of Nigerian descent discovered when they tried to vote in the Heflin-Vo race, that they had been fraudulently re-registered into a neighboring House District without their knowledge. Sometime in late 2003, someone had submitted new registrations for these voters, placing them into a House district that would soon involve a candidate of Nigerian descent. The candidate lost to an incumbent in the Democratic primary election.

During public hearings in the Heflin-Vo election contest, attorney Taylor argued that these African-American votes in the Heflin-Vo race should be ruled illegal because they were cast in a House District other than where the voters were registered.

As we reported earlier this week, anyone with access to the original documents in the Heflin-Vo election contest (including attorney Andy Taylor who submitted the docs in the first place) would have been able to plainly read the explanation that “fraudulent addresses” for voters of Nigerian descent were allegedly submitted by a candidate in a neighboring district. In fact, the assertion was twice stated in handwritten explanations on provisional ballots submitted by a husband-wife pair of voters.

The provisional ballots were approved by Harris County election officials who accepted that the voters should be considered as properly registered. And legislative Master of Discovery Will Hartnett (R-Dallas) also ruled the ballots to be legal. Hartnett explained in the election hearing that he had taken the time to call up one of the voters and discuss the predicament.

While it appeared to someone viewing the hearing that Hartnett was being exceedingly perceptive in his discovery of the fraudulent pattern, in fact he was just reading what was plainly written, not once but twice, on the evidence submitted by the lead attorney for Talmadge Heflin. This plainly stated explanation, which was accepted by Harris County officials, never stopped Heflin nor his attorneys from trying to suppress the votes of these African-American voters nevertheless, along with their votes for Hubert Vo.

The significance of this finding is that Andy Taylor continued to pursue allegations in a public hearing that a number of Nigerian-American voters (4-9 cases according to my preliminary estimate) had cast illegal ballots, even as he placed exculpatory evidence on the record that plainly indicated they were victims not perpetrators of fraud.

Andy Taylor’s double bad faith counts as a Civil Rights infringement in two ways. First, it was an effort to criminalize voters of color by deliberately overlooking exculpatory evidence on the record. Second, it counts as a bad faith effort to overturn the election of a candidate of color. Going after voters of African descent in an effort to unseat a candidate of Vietnamese descent, accusing all parties of fraud when your own evidence indicates they have done nothing wrong, this is offensive, outrageous, indecent, and should cost Andy Taylor his license to practice law in Texas.

National Edition of ‘Why Andy Taylor Should Have His Law License Revoked’, posted at ILCAOnline

By Greg Moses
Editor, Texas Civil Rights Review

Texas attorney Andy Taylor set out to prove that illegal and fraudulent voter behaviors were the main reasons behind the November election defeat of a Republican incumbent in a West Houston race for the Texas House. But according to archives of original documents that Taylor submitted in support of his case, it appears that he willfully ignored plain evidence that a number of voters were more likely victims, not perpetrators of wrongdoing. He went after them anyway.

Several voters of Nigerian descent discovered when they tried to vote in the November elections, that they had been fraudulently re-registered into a neighboring House District. Sometime in late 2003, someone had submitted new registrations for these voters, placing them into a legislative district that would soon involve a candidate of Nigerian descent. The candidate lost to an incumbent in the Democratic primary election.

During public hearings in the election contest that he brought to the legislature on behalf of his client Talmadge Heflin, Taylor argued that these African-American voters who preferred Democrat Hubert Vo should have their votes tossed out because they were cast in a legislative district other than where the voters were registered.

Yet, anyone with access to the original documents in the Heflin-Vo election contest (including Taylor himself, who submitted the docs in the first place) would have been able to plainly read the explanation that “fraudulent addresses” for voters of Nigerian descent had been allegedly submitted by someone other than the voters. In fact, the assertion was twice stated in carefully written explanations on envelopes for provisional ballots submitted by a husband-wife pair of voters.

The provisional ballots were approved by Harris County election officials who accepted that the voters should be considered as properly registered. And legislative Master of Discovery Will Hartnett (R-Dallas) also ruled the ballots to be legal. Hartnett explained in the election hearing that he had taken the time to call up one of the voters and discuss the predicament.

While it appeared to someone viewing the hearing that Hartnett was being exceedingly perceptive in his discovery of a pattern of fraud against the voters, in fact he was just reading what was plainly written, not once but twice, on the evidence submitted by Taylor. This plainly stated explanation, which was accepted by Harris County officials and Hartnett, never stopped Taylor from trying to suppress the votes of these African-American voters nevertheless, along with their votes for Vo.

The significance of this finding is that Taylor (the same attorney who defended the heavy-handed redistricting of the Texas Congressional map in 2004) continued to pursue allegations in a public hearing that a number of Nigerian-American voters (4-9 cases according to my preliminary estimate) had cast illegal ballots, even as he placed exculpatory evidence on the record that plainly indicated they were victims not perpetrators of fraud.

By pursuing his allegations against these voters in the context of a rare legislative election contest, Taylor used his law license to call down the power of the state to pursue certain voters under threat of arrest, when he had every reason to suspect they were innocent from the start. If the law is going to jealously guard Taylor’s right to pursue election irregularities, should it not just as jealously guard the rights of voters against willful and obnoxious harassment by agents of the law?

Taylor’s bad faith attack on these African-American voters counts as a Civil Rights infringement in two ways. First, it was an effort to criminalize voters of color by deliberately overlooking exculpatory evidence on the record. Second, it counts as a bad faith effort to overturn the election of a candidate of color. Using the power of law to harass voters of African descent in an effort to unseat a candidate of Vietnamese descent, accusing all parties of fraud when your own evidence indicates they have done nothing wrong, this is offensive, outrageous, indecent, and should cost Andy Taylor his license to practice law in Texas.

Note: The Texas Civil Rights Review contacted Andy Taylor via voice mail on Thursday afternoon and invited him to reply. As of Saturday morning, he had not responded.

Editorial
By Greg Moses

The term mainstream keeps coming up as an aspiration for Democratic Party strategists, and this worries me.

For one thing, mainstream to me screams status quo, and how are we ever going to get anywhere with an aspiration like that?

For another thing, if I go to the party website for Texas Democrats, I find mainstream on one page and grassroots on another. And I want to know, how can you do both at the same time?

Grassroots sounds okay to me. It means that you’re looking to the rising aspirations of people who have not yet come to full power. It means that you’re trying to affect if not revolutionize the mainstream. It means, in the words of Amy Goodman, who spoke in Austin yesterday that you are going where the silence is in order to hear what the future needs to be.

By comparison, mainstream is quite a defensive slogan. It tends to increase pressure to NOT listen to new and troubling voices.

Or to put it another way, Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about the difference between a thermometer and a thermostat. Mainstream is a thermometer measurement. It tells you the temperature of the political climate as it exists. Grassroots on the other hand is a thermostat concept, because when you get into it, you start wanting to change the temperature.

So, to Texas Democrats, a word of encouragement: drop the mainstream language.

Danny Glover last night at the benefit for the Texas Civil Rights Project whispered the famous Langston Hughes line: “America was never America to me.” It was a profound reminder that “mainstream” has never been mainstream for so many worthy voices.

If I try to imagine the motivation behind the clinging to mainstream, the best motivation seems to come from a fear of losing the so-called culture wars, of being left (yes left) with the smaller faction of votes whenever the “wedge” issues get pounded on: issues like gay marriage, pot smoking, affirmative action, reproductive rights for women.

But the best answer to this fear was suggested a couple of weeks ago by Damu Smith of Black Voices for Peace when he addressed a peace conference in Dallas. He said if your program is comprehensive enough and is really aggressive on all matters of jobs and justice, then the wedge issues won’t kill you. I’m putting my own words to his message here, but he seemed to suggest that Democrats were vulnerable to wedge issues only because they were so weak on everything else: war, jobs, rights, whatever.

So Democrats have pieces of the answer already in their language and history. Grassroots, civil rights, housing, wages, women’s reproductive rights, workers’ organizing rights, full and fair education, rights to speech and assembly. It would be great if we could add to this list Peace.

Democrats could do worse than follow the general outlines of an American dream articulated by King (and wonderfully revived last night in a performance by Felix Justice). Fight racism, poverty, and war. Work on empowerment politically, economically, and ideologically. Apologize NOT for your attempt to make America BE America. And who knows, someday we might have a mainstream we can live with.

Meanwhile, the focus on mainstream is damaging needed attention to grassroots. How many words have been devoted by official Democratic channels to the bad voter bill introduced by Kaufman County’s Betty Brown? Well, I’m happy to report that the party channels seem to be working very well in this instance. Now compare that to the number of words that official party people have uttered in recognition of Kaufman County Commissioner candidate Brenda Denson Prince, who is STILL fighting her fair election contest, and you’ll find in the word-count difference the tragedy of a mainstream party trying to survive without its grassroots.

Or take another example from the Heflin-Vo contest. How many grassroots Democrat voters were harassed by Republican attorneys in this race? Again, let me applaud any support that the official party mechanisms have thrown toward newly elected state rep Hubert Vo. But let me also wonder out loud, where is the matching concern for the grassroots voters that made Vo’s victory possible?

The mainstream strategy expresses and encourages a politics that will surely wither the aspirations of grassroots values as it ignores the struggles of ordinary Democrats who seek empowerment through voting and elections. So it is PAINFUL for me to watch Democrat officaldom (officialdumb?) holler “Mainstream!” and whisper “grassroots.” Surely, this is a hollow strategy that will collapse under the weight of its own pretensions.

If the leadership of Howard Dean means anything here, then the so-called grassroots movement among Texas Democrats will not prove to be just another mainstream shelter for a wanna-be status quo. But when I look at the recent experience of Houston voters or one Kaufman County candidate, I am NOT encouraged by what I see.

---

Notes:

First posted Sunday, Feb. 20, 2005.

Greg Wythe considers and rejects the argument at GregsOpinion.

In short, even a good thermostat has to compare itself to a thermometer reading in order to measure progress. To do otherwise, is to seek out reform for the sake of reform alone – a chaotic proposition at best. A grassroots without a tether cord to reality is not a true grassroots movement so much as a loose cannon.

Wythe’s response seems to join in spirit with two brief comments posted at Democratic Underground that want to minimize the diff between mainstream and grassroots, as if “grassroots” posed a threat of some kind. These responses prove that any assertion of grassroots urgency will have difficulty even among self-described progressive Democrats. I should not be surprised by this, I know. But I am surprised. I had imagined that “progressive” included a vigorous “grassroots” commitment. Now I have to ask, what does progressive mean, anyway?

While Wythe’s response announces a disagreement, in fact it affirms a main assumption: that a thermostat or a grassroots movement aims to change the existing temperature or status quo. Yet the prospect of such change seems to make Wythe nervous. Again, I have to figure out why a self-described “progressive” thinks that “grassroots” reform cannot be reality based. For me “grassroots” reform is where emerging realities are born. Perhaps this is what makes me a self-described “lefty.”

On the other hand, SoniaS at DU says there is a self-described grassroots movement in the Democratic Party:

We’ve all heard that saying “if ain’t broke don’t fix it”. Well that’s the m.o. around the party still, but at least they are now willing to try. The grassroots committee is completely brand new. They just set that up at the last SDEC meeting in January. The SDEC simply wouldn’t give up on that. Supposedly it had been proposed for many years but never approved. I think the success of the Dean organization finally woke them up. And I mean success, in terms of the Democracy for Texas growing, the Progressive Populist Caucus growing, and what happened with Travis getting bluer etc.

Sonia’s reply indicates that “grassroots” is a term that has finally achieved practical value in 2005. We’ll see what comes out of the Saturday meeting of the Progressive Populist Caucus.

Aside from the philosophical debate, two specific questions remain: will Democratic officaldom respond to the needs of either Brenda Denson Prince or the Democratic voters who were harassed in Houston? Maybe “grassroots” is not the best way to describe what’s being ignored here.